France: Beheaded for teaching freedom of speech
Tens of thousands of people joined rallies across France this week to denounce the horrific murder of a middle-school teacher by a teenage jihadist, said Cyril Brioulet in La Dépêche. Samuel Paty, 47, was walking home from his school in a suburb of Paris when he was stabbed and beheaded by Abdoullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen who boasted on social media that he had “executed a hell dog” and acted “in the name of Allah.” Ten days earlier, while teaching a class on freedom of expression, Paty had shown his students two caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Islamist terrorists murdered 12 people at the newspaper’s office in 2015 over the publication of those supposedly blasphemous images. Paty told students they could close their eyes or leave the classroom if they didn’t want to see the cartoons. But two days later, the father of one Muslim girl who hadn’t even been in class that day demanded that the teacher be fired. Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui took up the cause, igniting a campaign of hatred against Paty on social media. A few days later, Anzorov—who did not know the teacher—stalked and killed Paty.
The Chechen teen, who was quickly shot dead by police, was a mere foot soldier, said Jean Chichizola in Le Figaro. A key figure in this abhorrent crime is Sefrioui, a Moroccan-born Islamist with an “impressive extremist ‘career’”: a self-proclaimed imam, anti-Zionist activist, and serial poster of inflammatory videos in which he accuses France of persecuting its Muslims. Sefrioui has been detained by police multiple times over the years, including for harassing a moderate imam. But he has never been convicted or deported, because of a “lack of political will.” That complacency must end, said Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal in L’Express. France must wake up to the reality that it is in a “total war” against Islamism. The Islamists believe that the young Chechen “behaved like a brave and true Muslim” by killing this blasphemous teacher, and will be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven. How many more youths in France will be similarly radicalized?
President Emmanuel Macron has already launched a campaign to rein in Islamism in France, said Luc Le Vaillant in Libération. He wants to ensure that Muslims here are taught and preached to by imams who respect that this country was founded on secularism, who understand that French people are “emancipated individuals” who defend free thought. “His face moist with emotion and anger,” Macron stood in front of Paty’s school and declared of the jihadists, “They shall not pass.” Teachers are the front line in this defense, said Jérôme Fenoglio in Le Monde. Islamists see secular French schools as the enemy because teachers there are working to build a society in which “Islam is respected alongside other religions and must cohabit in peace with the Republic.” Now that we recognize that our teachers are in “mortal danger,” we must support and defend them. Not one more should die for teaching French values.